Battleforged: Book 1 - THE BILLION CREDIT HEIST - An Earth Apocalypse LitRPG Adventure

“Glacio! Glacio!” Emily’s voice was a high pitched, desperate scream as she gazed upon death’s grinning countenance in the form of a full score of massive axe-wielding giant minotaurs while huddled before the ruins of their fort.

Emily could barely move, so thick was the terror crushing down upon her. The cold soulless eyes of the bull-faced titans promised eternal torment. Their very souls would be lost in this eternal, awful maze, for being so foolish as to think the fates would allow weak-blooded humans to master realms only true Contenders and the most glorious of outworld champions were fit to take on. Those truths had been hammered into their heads by Sylvis himself, just days ago, when he and the other outworld lords of New York had gazed upon Silver Griffins with fangs bared in what Emily had been assured by her beaming father was highest approval.

They would even be permitted to nibble at the edges of greatness. So long as they didn’t take their daring too far.

And how impossibly distant her father’s proud smile seemed, now that she was trapped in this nightmare realm, forced to face death’s legions, with no way to escape. She choked back a shudder as the massive platoon of minotaurs charged forward with bellowing yells.

“Glacio!” She managed to scream one more time. Aiming not for the charging minotaurs, which she had no hope of harming directly, but rather for the granite slabs their cloven hoofs trampled, causing the monstrous 15-foot-tall beasts to slide against the impossibly slippery surface she had spent a full spell evolution enhancing, for this reason alone. Instead of nearly indestructible ice walls, which these minotaurs could still cleave through with a single swing, she had focused on filling the dual roles of DPS and crowd control.

“Nice one, Emily!” Jack flashed her a relieved smile, as if they actually had a chance because Emily had managed to break their charge for just a few seconds. Emily, however, knew they were only buying time after barely surviving their last encounter, and now there were so many more.

They had struggled just to take on bands of two. Three had been pushing it, before today. And now they were facing twenty?

Then Emily’s growing sense of dread turned to outright terror when a cold harsh voice echoed through the massive chamber, and the air was filled with massive spears, hurtling through the air.

“Shields!” Ron, her loyal bodyguard of almost a year, reflexively called out. But the boy who’s eyes had touched Emily’s scarred bitter heart on her first day of college was unable to fill the air with the furious cries of hope and salvation, no matter how much Emily sobbed and begged him to wake up. Because even if he wasn’t dead yet, he had suffered catastrophic injury that none of them could figure out how to heal, and the one precious ingredient they needed, just a single hour’s time to reset, was the one gift their roaring enemies absolutely refused to give them.

“Emily! Shields!” Ron’s desperate cry jolted Emily out of her fugue even as the air screeched with death hurtling their way. Emily’s mouth went dry. She could barely breath as she saw those bitter sharp spears plummeting right to them.

“Emily!” Yuki screamed.

“Glacius Murius!” She cried, before huddling against a too quiet Richard, her heart aching with despair and terror because she already knew that they were as good as dead.

She flinched when the now slowly approaching minotaurs, sliding on her multiple patches of ice all turned an odd shade of crimson, before realizing it was her crystalline dome itself that had turned tinted as the fierce-looking youth who had stumbled upon them out of nowhere, a Contender radiating terrible power he didn’t suppress nearly as well as he thought he did, slammed the dome with the palm of his hand.

“Mollet roboro dies!” Eric’s words echoed oddly through the air, as if echoing between mountains, not a comparatively tiny dome.

Emily wanted to sob with frustration, knowing that it meant nothing. That it would do nothing. And even if a part of her wanted to die with humiliation upon seeing him again, forced to remember so many ugly bits of her past that most of the time she could pretend never happened, that her father and mother acted like never happened, but had most definitely fucking happened… another part of her wanted to sob with relief that he was here.

The impossibly beautiful contender, scion of the most powerful movie mogul ever to leave her mark on Manhattan's night life. A boy whose predatory stare had once sent her heart racing and a primitive part of her throbbing with a hunger she had thought herself long past… by some twisted miracle, he was here.

How fucking ironic it was that they were all going to die together, when her father had promised that he was going to help clean up loose ends in Freetown so that she and her friends and fiance could adventure peacefully and safely forever.

“I love you, Richard!” The final words she’d ever utter as she hunched down over Richards body while the air shrieked with the cry of black steel spears hurtled by abominations even now charging forward. Her ears rang with the shriek of metal scraping against crystal and she wanted to puke for terror and pain as she curled up waiting to die… only to find herself in no physical pain at all.

“Fucking hell yes!” Yuki cheered, almond eyes wide with the adrenaline rush of certain death, looking coked to the gills. But Emily knew her friend well enough to know that she was high on battle alone, perhaps the most dangerous drug of all, as Yuki dragged a shaking Emily back to her feet.

“Your ice ward did it, Emily! Fuck yeah! I knew you’d evolve that skill in time!”

“I didn’t.” Her whisper didn’t even cut through the din as Ron and Jack braced themselves, a propped up Steve smiling her way.

“Synergized magic’s the best, huh?” Steve’s hand crackled with obsidian fire. “You can drop your ward when you’re ready, Emily. Only half of them were armed with oversized pilum, and our melee mavericks need room to fight.”

Emily was gazing in awed disbelief at her own dome, radiating so much more power than it ever had before. “I can’t believe I actually blocked it!”

“Yeah, that’s awesome, but lower it so we can pick some off before they get here!” Jack urged, snapping a dazed Emily from her fugue, for all that her heart was pounding so fast she thought she’d faint as she caught sight of the twenty behemoths continuing to pick their way through her frictionless ice, their crimson gold eyes promising death.

“Emily!”

She flinched before Yuki’s urgent cry… before feeling a gentle touch on her brow, gasping to see none other than Eric Silver smiling down at her so calmly, so warmly, as if there wasn’t a murderous crimson glint to his eyes. As if her father didn’t have a hard-on to take his whole family down a peg, after what Aurelia had done to the man… Never mind what Eric had done for her.

Emily gulped. She had wanted to reach out to him so many times, to thank him. And maybe… but she had always flinched away from it, desperate just to put that awful time out of mind for good. And she almost had. She had almost forgotten those awful years, before the world cracked and she found herself back home and under her father’s power once more.

Emily trembled as the monsters beyond them roared. And here Eric was, the monster her father swore was a threat to the entire east coast, holding her trembling fist with a gentle hand she knew could crush her own fragile fingers to pulp in the blink of an eye.

“Eric, please! I...”

“It’s all right. Just take a deep breath… and relax.”

His words were like liquid fire, shivering through her veins. She gazed up into those hypnotic blue eyes, an ocean of peace who had once filled her with such sweetness… and she felt the horrid tension and fear leave her, the grip on her spell easing at last.

“Awesome!” Jack hooted when the shield finally went down. Emily could hear him giving his own battle cry, throwing javelin after javelin that tore into the ranks of their giant foes. When he wasn’t busy playing the goof, her freckled friend was a force to be feared. Jack, when he got stone-cold serious, was capable of such potent concentrated destruction that Emily was almost jealous of just how well he had invested those two Nodes on what most elites thought was a shit class. But it was all in how you used your abilities, and Jack was on fire today as he brought down minotaur after minotaur presently stumbling on the ice, none of them in any position to counter his throws. Jack’ss deadly stream of artillery tier javelin earning furious roars as one Minotaur after another crashed to the ground with gaping craters in their chests where their hearts should be. And what an awesome sight it was to see a fourth collapsing just seconds later, clawing at it’s own throat now shooting a spray of blood.

“Fucking hell yeah!” Jack crowed, despite panting heavily. Because no matter how much he hyped up his base DPS, Emily knew for a fact he had only taken out multiple minotaurs so damned quickly because he had had a recent battlefield breakthrough and had just completely tapped out his class feat reserves, which really should be a green stamina bar all its own, but for some reason wasn’t.

In perfect follow up to Jack’s sweet triumph, taking full advantage of the momentarily flustered minotaurs, Steve’s own obsidian balls of fiery death were pounding into the chests of the closest pair charging their way with devastating results. Both those creatures collapsed like someone had cut their strings, her friend’s obsidian balls now so deadly they could effortlessly burn a hole through even a giant minotaur’s chest, leaving nothing but ash in its wake.

Her friends had blossomed in ways both terrible and beautiful, whereas she, on the other hand, still froze up whenever she heard those titan’s roar, and her beloved Richard couldn’t even move.

And the horror of it was, it didn’t even matter.

It didn’t even matter that two of her closest companions had grown by such leaps and bounds that what used to take them an hour of carefully prepared planning could now be done just a handful of seconds.

Because her friends had just blown there load and there were still over a dozen giant-sized minotaurs that were rapidly closing the distance, furiously stomping their hooves to shatter her frictionless ice before stepping forward.

It would still take them a good minute to reach them, though their furious glares and bellows made it exquisitely clear that they would make the humans who had invaded their territory pay in blood and tears for daring to inconvenience those lords of the maze.

“Oh shit, there are just too many of them,” Steve said with a bitter smile. “Sorry, Emily. That’s all I can give without giving a month of my life away with each additional casting.” He flashed a bitter smile. “Who the fuck am I kidding? Of course I’ll be doing just that,” he said, before his eyes widened when the meatiest, juiciest sandwich Emily had ever seen made it’s way into Steve’s shaking hand, held by none other than a grinning Eric.

“Just give me a shout whenever you get the munchies, buddy,” Eric said, clapping Steve’s shoulder and earning a tired laugh in turn.

“You’re too much, man, you know that?” Steve commended before tearing into the sandwich, a look of bliss on his features. Emily’s eyes widened when she saw the way Steve’s hollowed cheeks began to visibly fill back out, making it clear that Eric really did have access to some badass magical sandwiches. Of course, it was also painfully obvious that Steve had already pushed himself too damned far. As if his lush thick curls going listless with a tint of grey wasn’t indication enough.

“Volum tora kos!”

The hideous words echoed through the air, spoken by none other than the giant leader of the minotaur swarm eager for their deaths, and suddenly Emily felt so dizzy it was all she could do not to collapse. Yuki had already tumbled over, it hitting her far worse, for some reason, the poor girl curling in a groaning ball and puking her guts out.

Emily choked back a cry, feeling Richard weaken in her arms from yet another assault on his injured form. “Richard, hang in there baby, please!”

She hated how desperately plaintive her words sounded. Why couldn’t she be strong like Jack was? Even now laughing through the pain.

“No worse than getting in a fight after drinking wild turkey. Fuck it!” Yet Jack’s snarl turned to a groan of dismay when his ascended javelin, their trump card, skewed off so badly it hit a far wall, totally missing their targets, who were now all bellowing laughter as if they too sensed that the end was near.

The ground shook as the minotaurs marched forward in eerie synchronized lockstep, sending jolts of dread through Emily’s bones with each pound of their hooves, their leader chortling, because they all knew exactly how this would end.

Emily quickly turned her focus to Eric, scowling at their shared enemy and only now drawing his hideous bow of bone and twisted nightmares. Emily’s eyes helplessly skittered away whenever she saw the hideous faces carved so carefully cared into that eldritch artifact. Expressions that seemed to writhe with unspeakable torment whenever the bow limbs moved, as they did now, Eric casually drawing the bow string to his cheek, sighting his target, and releasing as if it were as effortless as breathing. The only odd thing was that there was no arrow being drawn at all.

Until suddenly there was. An arrow appearing as if by magic, the head blazing with a furious intensity that made Emily cry out, seeing the painfully brilliant point like the tip of welding torch that wouldn’t stop flaring in her eye even after the air rang with the crack of bow limbs snapping back with far too much tension as the minotaurs’ steady march was broken up by fresh squeals band furious roars.

Eric, whose cold, focused expression brought so many painful memories back to the fore did nothing but smile dispassionately at the horrific din of less-than-pleased minotaurs while pulling back the powerful limbs of his bow and firing again and again, Emily counting five inhuman cries and countless bellowing roars before catching Eric’s sigh.

“Fuck. It’s not enough.”

Emily blinked away the last of the dazzle, knowing better than to look until Eric had finished his shooting, lest she be blinded by the flaring brilliance that for some reason didn’t seem to effect him at all. Never mind that he had to sight his targets with that flare in his vision.

“Eric?”

She hated the anxiety in her voice, for all that she was relieved to see five more fallen minotaurs, noting that every last one of them had died twisted in torment, their now charred hands having reached for the blazing white-hot pyres that their skulls had become.

It was as if Eric had managed to hit each of them in the eye, never mind that those monstrous creatures, almost as fast as they were, should have been able to dodge at least a couple shots.

But she supposed it made sense, with Eric being some sort of evolved archer who had clearly mastered fire, as that strange interface voice had implied earlier, and if Steve’s remarkable recovery was any indication, blood as well.

She choked back a sob as her hopeful gaze filled with despair.

It didn’t matter that they had taken down almost a dozen of those monsters in less than a minute, and that everyone save Eric was crippled by dizziness and pain. All that mattered was that just as many axe wielding titans remained as made up their own party, in addition to the final giant among giants, roaring chants that sent all of them save Jack and Eric crashing to their knees.

Ultimately they would die here, Emily feared. Their struggle had been fruitless, the levels they had gained meaningless. The minute that bastard Sylvis had forced Eric through, they were all as good as dead.

Just as their enemies… humanity’s enemies, had no doubt planned from the very start.

“No, fuck no. It doesn’t end here!” Cried a furious Jack of all people, face locked in a snarl as he glared hate at the minotaurs smashing through the last of the ice. The only one save Eric even on his feet.

Even her sworn bodyguard Ron was shaking like a leaf, leaking tears of black ichor and bright red blood, having been hit harder by the dark chants than anyone else, it seemed, despite his crazy high Vitality of near a hundred.

“Damn right it doesn’t,” said none other than Eric, with that same cocky smile she remembered after a tearful drunken confession whispered in his arms, two years ago.

A confession that had ended with half the mansion in a wild blaze, all the guests fleeing into the night, the only missing person being an enforcer who had taken liberties he never should have been allowed.

And how furious her father was, pointing his finger a coolly smiling Aurelia’s way, months later, when next they crossed paths at a private gala, a humiliated Emily forced to bear witness to the whole damned thing. And how grateful she was that Aurelia didn’t rub the shame of it in her face, having eyes only for her father.

“I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, Senator Chelton. Though it is such a shame to hear about the fire. But of course, someone as savvy and forward-thinking as yourself no doubt had plenty of insurance, no?”

Eric hadn’t been present at the gala. In fact, Emily had never seen him again, despite the one letter she had dared to write him. Yet as grateful as she was that she could finally start over as the innocent college freshman she had so desperately yearned to be, without fear of those awful tapes humiliating her years down the line… even then she had known Eric to be pretty damn handy when it came to flame.

Like the fire that was now filling his hands, his eldritch bone bow gone as if it had never been.

Jack gave a bitter laugh. “Let me guess. Your bow’s some kind of exotic necromancer spell. Am I right? That’s how you got those awesome sandwiches for Steve, refueling weird potency pools too closely tied to one’s life force. Only now, you’re finally tapped like the rest of us.” Jack gazed at the rapidly approaching minotaurs with an odd mixture of fear and determination. “It’s okay. You’ve done enough. Eat one of your sandwiches. I’ll buy you at least a couple seconds.”

The minotaurs roared as they closed.

Yuki cursed and sobbed. “Fuck, why can’t I get up? Now I could show all you assholes what I could do, taking them out from behind… if only I didn’t feel like I was dying!”

“Willpower check needed,” Steve said with a soft chuckle, who was perfectly steady, just too wounded to move. “You know, one of those seemingly pointless stupid stats that you can only raise up by letting the System twist inside your mind, or through actually dealing with serious fucking pain? Not a stat most of us are anxious to force up. More the fool us.”

Jack glared Eric’s way. “Dude, I said I’d cover you! Now eat your fucking sandwich!”

Yet instead of a sandwich, an intent-looking Eric pulled out from nowhere what looked like a classic scroll from World of Warblades.

Steve’s eyes widened. “Shit, is that thing really made of bone and monster hide?”

Emily couldn’t say for sure, but even she saw the way the crimson scrawls that looked like a combination of spider scratches and really bad cursive squiggled upon the leathery parchment that might or might not have been skin. A realization that made her flesh crawl.

Not that she gave a fuck how dark a path Eric walked, with death roaring and bleating as they shattered the last of Emily’s ice… and why the hell hadn’t she made more? Why was she so fucking nauseous and dizzy with fear and just kneeling like a dazed sacrifice while that giant minotaur mocked her in her own mind?

Then she heard it… the words that changed absolutely everything.

“Hell Vines! Hell Vines! Inevitable Doom.”

Six words that seemed to echo endlessly in the air as giant trees comprised of massive thorny limbs that might have been wood or white-hot flame, but either way were considerably more massive than the minotaurs themselves. Those gargantuan thorn-covered vines covered in flame immediately began lashing out at the beasts that were suddenly stumbling back, their cow-eyes now wide with fear.

For just a second Emily felt an awful knot of desperate hope roiling in her belly before the minotaur leader gave an angry bellow and the leading trio of minotaurs snarled their defiance, lashing out with their massive battle axes that were made for battle, not lumber, but nonetheless would be perfect for cutting down stubborn shrubbery… save when that shrubbery abruptly yanked the closest of the squealing minotaurs up by its hocks before clutching them in its multiple blazing limbs, the poor beast suddenly shrieking and squealing as it was covered in furious flames. Now the dying minotaur was writhing in agony no doubt made all the worse when tendrils of liquid fire rammed down the creature’s throat, searing its lungs to ash.

The two other would-be lumberjacks managed to chop off a good pair of tendrils before wisely leaping back, glaring at the chieftain who roared at them both, before stomping forward with his own battle axe crackling with eldritch enchantments that had Emily whimpering like a frightened girl when the air suddenly rang with a curiously muted sonic crack, the chief baddy stumbling back as an arrow planted itself in it’s thigh, shooting out white hot flame that caused it to squeal, desperate to pull it out.

“Now, Jack! Use your ice, Emily! Steve, let’s rock those doom balls!” Eric shouted, somehow free of the terror that had frozen everyone else to a terrified stupor.

Emily couldn’t believe that crazy boy could sound so enthusiastic. Even now flashing his infuriating adorable madcap grin as if he were raiding an opposing guild on the double-monitor gaming rig he used to live-stream on, not delving for his life. Yet his words were also strangely compelling, and she found herself matching his madcap excitement with a smile of her own, roaring forth the words she should have been belting out every second that their foes were stymied. The one spell she could cast, over and over, no matter how much those fuckers threatened to end her with their bellows.

Who the fuck cared if their hooves could crack her ice?

She could always put down more.

“Glacio! Glacio, motherfuckers!”

Almost like it was bouncing at the gates for the release, the magic poured out of her in thick glossy waves of pristine ice that bubbled up around the minotaur’s feet, not only repairing the shattered holes they had struggled to pound into her last sheet, but stacking beautifully on top of itself in ways she had never even attempted before, for some stupid reason.

Because it worked brilliantly, each layer of ice even thicker and glossier than the one before.

Best of all, when the glaring minotaurs with the axes tried to smash through her latest sheets, they only managed to send their hooves skittering across its super slick surface. The massive fiery hell plants would then dark forward to wrap around the suddenly squealing cows before yanking them into the heart of the swarm of writhing thorn-covered vines, ripping open and cooking their struggling flesh till it smoked and charrred while shoving thorny tendrils down the minotaurs shrieking orifices, smothering and shishkebabing them all at once.

It was glorious, and downright horrific.

And the way Steve and Alex were whooping it up, it was just what they needed to restore morale as the air came alive with javelins firing like artillery, ripping through jugulars and abdomens. Whatever angle Jack could get through the vines was a shot he took, to brilliant effect. Even as the Minotaurs found new reasons to fear approaching their stubborn prey, death came from above in the form of obsidian balls that hooked right over the vines to slam into one minotaur skull after another, that impossibly glorious ball of destruction that cost Steve so much to unleash proving just how damn useful it was, the only attack they had that could make any sort of dent on those enchanted skulls, sending one minotaur after another collapsing like their strings had been cut.

And all the while a madly grinning Eric was cracking jokes while unleashing shot after shot with his bow. Even if he was no longer able to shoot perfect bullseyes with the fiery vines blocking so many shots, he still absolutely peppered them with arrows that always struck his prey in the abdomen or joints at just the right moment to send those oversized bulls stumbling with painful squeals right into the fiery vines that happily finished off any prey that the three boys managed to maim or, in Steve’s case, outright kill.

And Emily, her cheeks hurting with how fiercely she was laughing and smiling through her tears, was raising her own ice staff with fierce pride, adding to the chaos as she felt herself slowly coming to a deeper understanding of her art, feeling like she was on the cusp of a breakthrough as each layer of ice blossomed on top of the other.

“Glacio! Glacio!” She cried out with jubilation and joy as the squealing minotaurs fought less like a well oiled machine intent on bringing their deaths and more like panicked creatures now desperate to escape what would be there doom as one after another collapsed, and suddenly there were fresh oak-sized trees on all sides of the increasingly panicked minotaurs as Eric roared his deadly chant and unleashed fiery arrow after fiery arrow.

The ear-piercing squeals and bellows of their enemies were so soon replaced by the scents of charred meat and the roar of flame, and never had Emily been so happy to belt out her own growing spell mastery as Jack honed his deadly spear throwing and Steve devoured yet another sandwich a smiling Eric handed him before joining in the final blitz as they brought down their giant-sized targets until only one remained.

For just a heartbeat, Emily’s fierce sense of triumph was replaced by dread as the massive, near twenty-foot tall minotaur leading the charge seemed to glare through the vines Right at her! And she couldn’t help but whimper as the awful creature flashed a deadly smile, somehow finding some hidden way right through the trees, as if embracing some dreadful gift that allowed it to slip through any barrier like a maze… and it was Emily’s doom to lead it through.

Before she was knocked over with a startled cry by none other than Jack, giving her the strangest look.

“Emily, what the fuck are you doing!?”

She flinched, choking down a terrified sob as the minotaur appeared right in front of them!

Giving a triumphant roar as it swung its axe, eager to cleave free all their heads.

“Emily, get down!”

And somehow Jack was scooping both her and Richard up, as the stone tiles exploded in a massive crater and Emily screamed, hating the fact that they had come so close, only to die right here and now, before the floor shook with a great crash and she was sent flying, desperate to hold Richard close, sobbing her grief and regret… before the air rang with laughter.

Her eyes widened, turning around to gaze upon the massive minotaur that had sworn to claim her, body and soul, with a single look of its hypnotic gaze.

Eyes that would haunt her in her dreams, perhaps, but never again in real life, as those awful eyes were presently spurting sprays of superheated brain before the entire skull burst into a roaring, white-hot flame as Eric laughed and gave her a thumbs up.

“We did it, Emily! That fucker was so distracted taking the bait that it left itself wide open to me and Steve pulling the finishing combo. Thank you, Emily! And Jack? Nice save.”

“Naturally,” Jack said with a grin. “And I think I actually managed to rank up both my Javelin throwing and my Javelin node skills. And hell yes, I leveled up! Hoorah!”

Emily just stood there, staring at the boys getting such a high off nearly getting killed, and she couldn’t deny the ebullition she also felt, so buoyant and light, having experienced such a roller coaster of emotions, from despair to fierce exultation to the awe and wonder of a fresh breakthrough as she sensed her favorite spells evolve and strengthen in ways both glorious and profound.

But still… despite savoring sweetest relief, she couldn’t deny her shame. She would own it, no matter how much it stung. “But Jack, the last one.” She swallowed, heart pounding, cheeks flushed with painful heat. “It locked on to me. I know it did. I…. somehow, I brought it through the maze of Eric’s hell trees!”

“Seriously?” This from Yuki, still wan and shaking from the horrible nausea that had gripped her, only now stumbling to her feet with the help of her enchanted naginata. “Girl, at least you were fighting through the dizziness and giving it your all! Me? I was so fucking sick that I couldn’t do shit! And that was a high level boss-tier… or maybe sub-boss tier, elite motherfucker. So it used some sort of linking magic to bridge the gap with your eyes. So what the fuck were you supposed to do? Be stupid enough to take your eyes off your enemy?”

Yuki solemnly shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think it was more just the luck of the draw. What mattered was that our gung ho boys were all about putting that fucker down, where it counted, in the brain-holes, while it was phasing in from the trees and we all had perfect line-of-sight on it’s face, not half-protected by the very fiery vines killing it.”

Yuki turned, hands on hips, smirking Eric’s way. “Wouldn’t you say that about sums it up, archer who can somehow summon badass elite tier crowd control hell trees?”

A chuckling Eric saluted them both with a celebratory stein of mead he was now passing all of them from one of the many kegs he had clearly pilfered from the elves. And none of them were complaining.

“I’d say that about sums it up nicely, Yuki.” Then Eric flashed Emily a smile that sent her heart fluttering in her chest… and a sudden surge of guilt, alleviated only when she looked her boyfriend’s way. Fortunately Richard was now sleeping like a baby on the road to recovery, thank goodness, his head resting on her wool-lined jacket which she did bring, because ice mistress or no, Classer vitality or no, she had always hated being cold, and wasn’t going to put up with chilly dungeons now

“You absolutely kicked ass, Emily,” Eric grandly declared. “Reinforcing the Ice Slick which made it impossible for them to just blitz through my hell vines and made it that much easier for the limbs to grab their prey and force them off balance was exactly what we needed..” He saluted them all with his stein. “To a kickass team effort, and hopefully levels and skill boosts to all of us, because we were definitely walking the path of peril there!”

Emily grinned, her heart glowing with remembered warmth for the hotblooded wildcard her family had always hated and the tabloids had so loved to gossip about, but who had now played the dark knight twice in her bittersweet life tale, right when she needed him the most.

Yuki abruptly turned her way as Eric and Jack talked shop, comparing weapons and praise, seeing far too much with those beautiful almond eyes of hers. And how did she get her shadow and liner to look so hot and not streak at all, even when they were in the middle of a fucking dungeon? Because with the looks Eric had been giving her…

Yuki smirked. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to be starting anything with your old flame.”

Emily open her mouth, but no words came out. A thousand protestations flickered across her mind’s eye as she turned her focus back to Richard. “Is it that obvious?” she whispered, feeling a flush creep across her cheeks as Yuki gave her a gentle hug, somehow understanding.

“No. And I don’t think Richard will ever piece your shared past with Eric. He never had to understand that kind of life… at least not like we did.”

Now Emily’s cheeks were blazing, tears creeping down her face as she trembled and held Richard close. “Yuki...”

“It’s fine. It’s clear he still cares about you, and I don’t think he’d ever do anything to hurt you. Including bring up the twisted games all our families clearly played. I’m just glad to see that he didn’t, well...”

“Hurt me?” Emily swallowed the lump in his throat. “No, Yuki. He was… sweet. Everything I could have wanted, if it had been, well, real. Not just, you know...”

“I know.”

Emily shook her head. “The way he held me... even back then, just a couple years back, somehow I knew that he knew. And when I broke down and cried in his arms, when he realized how much everything was hurting me, something changed. And suddenly it wasn’t a goofy boy and we could pretend it was just innocent sweet fumbling and who the hell cared what sick games our parents were playing at downstairs? He knew.” She took a shuddering breath. “And maybe he did me a favor I had no right to ask of him, finally setting me free.” She flashed a bittersweet smile, her tears dripping on Richard’s beautiful sleeping face.

“And then I truly was free. Starting life as an innocent freshman in upstate New York where I met Richard, and he accepted me as the girl that I so desperately wanted to be.”

Yuki gave a solemn nod. “Enthusiastic. Idealistic. The cheerful engaging girl with a sweet smile and the perfect past that every boy dreams of marrying and every girl dreams of being.”

Emily nodded. “The farthest thing from the… whatever you want to call what me and Jazmine had to be.” She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, shaking in Yuki’s arms. “I… I put all that shit far behind me. And Richard, he’s no fool. Somehow, I know that he knows with his smile, but he loves me. He actually loves fucked up me, accepts me as the girl I try so hard to be, and has absolutely no interest in my past.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” Yuki chided. “Richard’s good people. And it’s not like his family’s completely innocent, either. Even if they kept him out of it and they’re a bit less… let’s call it jaded, than our own families are.”

Emily sighed. “I just feel bad for Eric. If our situation was rough...”

Yuki snorted. “He’s the son of the Winter Queen, Emily. That’s the mean one who eats all the children’s hearts and freezes entire cities in eternal frost in the storybooks. But seriously… if the look in my uncle’s eyes was anything to go by, it was pretty bad.”

Emily winced. “Shit. I’m surprised he managed to keep his head on straight.”

“He didn’t.” Yuki smiled a confused Emily’s way. “You seriously didn’t hear all the juicy gossip about Eric in our parent’s circles? Where have you been, Emily?” She grinned at her friend’s blush. “Oh, that’s right. You managed to break free of ‘the life’ and go live your dream in upstate New York.”

Yuki chuckled throatily, massaging her friend’s shoulders. “You made the right call, there. As for Eric?” She shrugged. “Weird as it may sound, with the way he’s trying so hard to impress us and win us over, I think he’s lonely and is looking for some friends.” She gave Emily a hard look that sent shivers down her spine. “And believe me, Emily. We really want to be his friends.”

Emily swallowed her parched throat, before drinking the mead that was somehow in her hand.

“I know,” she whispered, before her eyes widened with delight. “And this is some fucking delicious mead. My mana’s perking right back up!”

Yuki nodded. “Yup. Royal Sylvan mead that our hero just happens to have on tap.” She smirked. “Must be nice to be the brother of the future queen of Terra, if his mother has anything to say about it.”

“A development which our parents strongly oppose,” Emily noted with a wry smile.

Yuki nodded. “And look where that got them. A favor owed to those who gave us such a bittersweet head start that our families dutifully honored, only for Sylvis himself to do his best to take all of us out, pure-blooded humans and half-elf former boyfriend in one fell swoop.” She flashed a bitter smile. “I don’t know about you, Emily, but I’m no longer putting much stock in any of the gnoll or goblin faction talking points about working together for a more harmonious, peaceful Earth.”

Emily shivered, forced to accept yet another uncomfortable truth. “Because it’s all bullshit. Those alien assholes will happily play us off against one another like European diplomats playing Native American tribes against one another, letting them wipe each other out before purging the rest.”

Yuki nodded. “Not that any dominant ethnic majority in any part of the world is that much better, if you study the history. Even my ancestors have all sorts of uncomfortable skeletons in their closets. And the choices of those who have come and gone long before we were ever born has nothing to do with the choices we make in our own lives, Emily. Their sins are theirs alone to bear. Never forget that. But what we do have to keep in mind, is if we humans are savage and cruel enough to do that to one another, and have been since mankind became the dominant race and every other branch of the hominin family tree conveniently died out with our rise, why the hell would we expect anything different from alien races who came to Earth to subjugate us all? Especially when those bastards have been caught happily eating the flesh of men, women, and children in their more unguarded moments… and not just the fucking orcs. It’s all of them that should be purged from our planet!”

Emily swallowed, sensing the trembling fury Yuki was now just barely keeping in check. Wordlessly, she turned around and gave Yuki a sisterly squeeze, and how odd it was that now she was comforting the strongest girl she knew, quietly sobbing into her arms.

Only when Yuki swallowed, flashing a brilliant smile and swearing she wouldn’t break down like an idiot topside, only here beside a girl she could trust, did they turn to lighter topics, sharing a laugh, before Yuki squeezed her hand and left her to her beau.

She swallowed the lump in her throat as she gazed down at Richard, her heart melting for the beautiful boy who needed her. She kissed his brow, tenderly wiping the sweat-soaked strands of hair from his forehead, before turning to gaze at the wildcard who had both imperiled and saved their lives. Radiating so much wild potency with a lion’s commanding presence that he couldn’t help but draw people’s gazes, even now he was cracking jokes with Steve and giving him what sounded like life advice that their friend was nodding along with and seemingly taking very, very seriously.

Emily furrowed her brow when Yuki returned with fresh egg salad sandwiches for both of them. “Steve’s Obsidian Fire discipline gets pretty damn close to necromancy and forbidden magics, right?”

Yuki smirked. “Forbidden, according to the assholes happily stabbing us all in our backs, sure.”

“Yeah… so how come Eric, our newfound archer, is just full of advice Steve looks like he’s taking very, very seriously?”

Yuki’s grin widened. “I was wondering when you’d pick up on that. I mean, let’s not even talk about his bone bow looking like some nightmare artifact in the game of your choice, or the fact that he’s so comfortable using animal parts and blood. Because in any game we ever played that would make us...”

“Necromancers,” they said together, giving Eric pointed looks as they did so.

Emily frowned. “Dad said they were going to Freetown to preserve the peace, get rid of a dangerous threat, ha ha, and put firm strictures on what he called ‘forbidden arts.’ Why am I almost certain that whatever the hell Eric’s capable of will definitely fit in that category?”

Yuki smirked. “Because you weren’t born yesterday?” She then sighed and shook her head. “And what’s really fucked up is, assuming your dad and the other administrators put any strictures in place, you just know that Steve’s magic is going to fall under those edicts. Never mind that our families have been happily profiting from his good fortune, at no small cost to Steve.”

“I think you’re right, Yuki. So what the fuck do we do?”

“Well, first thing we do is get the fuck out of here. After that, we’ll see, I guess.”

Emily’s jaw clenched. “Yuki, after seeing Eric, being reminded of so much shit I tried so fucking hard to pretend never happened, then finding out that all of this near death bullshit is because Sylvis was fucking us all over… I kind of don’t think I want to go back.”

Her heart skipped a beat as she uttered words she had never dared to so much as whisper before.

Yuki stared at her for long moments. “Are you sure?”

Heart pounding in her chest, she nodded. “Yeah, you know what? I think I am.”

Yuki’s grin was fearless. Because after what they had already faced and overcome, why the hell should they fear the opinions of any stuffy bureaucrat or tyrannical parent?

“Then let’s get the fuck out of New York.”